Where the book summaries are probably longer than the reviews

Tag: dystopian future

Prentisstown isn’t like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts in an overwhelming, never-ending stream of Noise. Just a month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd and his dog, Manchee — whose thoughts Todd can hear too, whether he wants to or not — stumble upon an area of complete silence. They find that in a town where privacy is impossible, something terrible has been hidden — a secret so awful that Todd and Manchee must run for their lives.

But how do you escape when your pursuers can hear your every thought?

Review:

This is a book that had been raved about by many of my friends but I’d always overlooked because I’d never been impressed by the summary. Shows me what I know. I shouldn’t go judging the book by its blurb because it was so much better than the summary made it sound. It was an epic adventure. A lot of books advertise an adventure but this truly was one, traversing an interesting, unique world in a way that I’ve never really seen.

It took me a little bit of time to get into this book because of how it’s written. Certain words are deliberately misspelled to illustrate the education level and different-ness of the characters, namely the men of Prentisstown. A couple of times, it threw me out of the book but I was able to climb back in and eventually I got used to the style and grew to enjoy it because it’s so unlike things I’ve read before.

The book also keeps the aura of mystery going for a long time so you’re constantly wondering what about Prentisstown is so bad, why is Todd so wanted, what are the Spackle, and where did the Noise come from? The questions do get answered but they’re drawn out, speckled here and there to keep you interested and boy, I was kept interested.

I cried a lot when Manchee’s fate was revealed. I love that dog. So did Todd.

The ending was a great setup for the future books. It was desolate, sad and left you hanging with even more questions now that you’d had some answers. Time to jump into book number two!

Rowan and Citra take opposite stances on the morality of the Scythedom, putting them at odds, in the second novel of the chilling New York Times bestselling series from Neal Shusterman, author of the Unwind dystology.

Rowan has gone rogue, and has taken it upon himself to put the Scythedom through a trial by fire. Literally. In the year since Winter Conclave, he has gone off-grid, and has been striking out against corrupt scythes—not only in MidMerica, but across the entire continent. He is a dark folk hero now—“Scythe Lucifer”—a vigilante taking down corrupt scythes in flames.

Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order” scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish” so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?

Review (minimal spoilers):

The summary does not even begin to scratch the surface of all the things going on in this book. From what (I felt) was a fairly straightforward (but immensely enjoyable) plot in Scythe expanded into multiple overlapping storylines as well as new characters.

At a certain point in roughly the middle of the book I thought to myself, “Is this too much?” And then I decided that I didn’t care because the ride was too enjoyable. I was rewarded in the end by having all the storylines neatly wrap up and then abruptly be cut off by an amazing cliffhanger that has me desperate to see what comes next.

The main star of the show in this novel is Citra, or Scythe Anastasia. Her growth from novice overachiever in the first book to political savvy junior scythe in this adventure is seamless and wonderful to read. Rowan, I feel, takes a bit of a back seat. Or perhaps I was so thirsty for more of Rowan’s story after Scythe that nothing would satisfy me. The secondary star for me was definitely Greyson Tolliver whose storyline had me as interested as any of the main characters. While in the previous book, each chapter had some quotation from a scythe’s journal — notably Scythe Curie — in this novel we have insights from the Thunderhead itself which I feel adds so much to the worldbuilding of this novel and bookends all the chapters with just enough commentary to make you understand how the world and the Thunderhead thinks (which often syncs up with what you’re thinking).

And oh the worldbuilding. So much was added and shaped and honed. So much that I didn’t understand or was annoyed by now makes sense. The Tonists! The Tonists!

One drowsy summer’s day in 1984, teenage runaway Holly Sykes encounters a strange woman who offers a small kindness in exchange for ‘asylum’. Decades will pass before Holly understands exactly what sort of asylum the woman was seeking…

The Bone Clocks follows the twists and turns of Holly’s life from a scarred adolescence in Gravesend to old age on Ireland’s Atlantic coast as Europe’s oil supply dries up – a life not so far out of the ordinary, yet punctuated by flashes of precognition, visits from people who emerge from thin air and brief lapses in the laws of reality. For Holly Sykes – daughter, sister, mother, guardian – is also an unwitting player in a murderous feud played out in the shadows and margins of our world, and may prove to be its decisive weapon.

Metaphysical thriller, meditation on mortality and chronicle of our self-devouring times, this kaleidoscopic novel crackles with the invention and wit that have made David Mitchell one of the most celebrated writers of his generation. Here is fiction at its spellbinding and memorable best.

Review

(Note: This is an older review pulled from my Goodreads.)

I finished this in a blurry haze (some of that blur came from tears, I’ll admit) and like every other David Mitchell book I’ve read, I’m completely unable to write a review.

The Bone Clocks doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights Cloud Atlas did for me — will any book? — but there’s some damn good character work here. The fantastical aspect is intriguing and unique, as far as I can tell. Though it took a while for the fantasy to be more than just bits and pieces in the first few sections, when we finally reach the actual meaty plot of the novel, we’ve traversed decades and touched different aspects of Holly Sykes’ life through her eyes and the eyes of others who knew her.

Each character section is incredibly compelling, with the sort of full immersion that Mitchell is a master of – Holly sounds completely different from Hugo and Crispin, etc. Crispin Hershey was probably my favorite of the character studies, considering just how much development he goes through. By the time his section ended, I was…angry, I’d say? So much going, and to have it just stop was frustrating.

That’s the mark of how easily it was to get into the heads of these characters – unfortunately, in the case of Hugo Lamb. Ugh. Uuuuggghhhh.

I won’t lie and say I wasn’t super excited to see some familiar names from other Mitchell novels. It makes it feel like there’s some larger, interconnected universe at play, and I like thinking that all the characters I’ve loved from his other novels are still wandering around, having lives and interacting just slightly with other characters.

Anyway. I suppose that was something of a review. A mess, I’d say, but after reading hundreds of pages of David Mitchell, anything I write anywhere would seem a mess.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

Review:

No one in the whole world can die, except when they’re gleaned by a scythe. The human race has reached this kind of stagnate perfection, brought about by the cloud, the Internet evolving into an all-knowing, all-seeing force that controls the world to make it function perfectly.

(Honestly, this is greatly interesting to me, but only the surface gets scratched in the novel. I’m hoping for more when the next two come out.)

Citra and Rowan are thrust into an increasingly corrupt system of Scythedom, designed, in theory, to keep the human population in check. They are above the law and untouchable and therefore, of course, have plenty of evils lurking around in the shadows. The romance between the two is a bit pasteded on yay, but because of that it’s hugely background, which I liked. This is a great world-building story and definitely something that’ll interest me into the next two books.

KATE HARKER isn’t afraid of monsters. She hunts them. And she’s good at it.

AUGUST FLYNN once yearned to be human. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost.

THE WAR HAS BEGUN.

THE MONSTERS ARE WINNING.

Kate will have to return to Verity. August will have to let her back in. And a new monster is waiting—one that feeds on chaos and brings out its victims’ inner demons.

Which will be harder to conquer: the monsters they face, or the monsters within?

Review:

The second in the series Monsters of Verity (sequel to This Savage Song), Our Dark Duet hits the ground running and never stops. The pace is much faster and the tone much more desperate than This Savage Song, making the whole experience a bit like a thrill ride.

While I really enjoyed all the characters for different reasons, I do have to pay some special attention to the character of Soro, who is genderqueer. It’s not often you find a genderqueer character in fiction, let alone young adult fiction, so this was a pleasant surprise. Soro’s a flute playing, monster killing, stone cold badass who is oftentimes the voice of reason in highly emotional situations. I would have loved an entire series about them and their adventures.

Get on that, Victoria Schwab.

The Short & Lazy Method

This is a book review blog. Technically. We’re really just here for sharing random thoughts about books we’ve read without having to commit the time and mental bandwidth to actually writing “proper” book reviews.